We had a guy come over to the house yesterday to install a backup device on our computer by the name of Ramon, a fast fingered tech guy.
As he worked we got to talking about all the audio tapes on the desk from my old Runners Digest radio show in Boston and I went and showed him an interview I did with Bobbi Gibb in 1980 explaining how she was the first woman to run the Boston Marathon in 1966 but how she had to sneak into the race cause women weren’t allowed to run back then and how all these years later a statue is going to be erected in her honor at the start line next April and, yea, she is actually the sculptor of her own younger likeness.
Old tapes waiting to be digitized from Runners Digest days
And then I told the story about how the following year another woman named Kathrine Switzer got entered by her coach from Syracuse University, not out of any devious plan, just that he had a bunch of people to enter and used their initials rather than first names. So the BAA didn’t know she was a woman when the entries arrived, so they just sent back the bib numbers for everybody when if they knew she was a woman they wouldn’t have sent one to her.
But then when they saw a real live woman actually running in their race with a bib number on her chest, well this one official had a cow and came charging out to try to grab the number from her. but he found out real quick that Kathrine’s boyfriend was a hammer-thrower who blocked this older Scotsman into the bushes and the whole thing was photographed by the media and instantly went viral worldwide and how that became a real marker in the early stages of the women’s movement.
And Ramon was a bit taken aback by it all, being as he was still in his late 20s or so, and hadn’t ever heard the whole saga.
But then he wanted to know “is that the one that cheated?”
“Kathrine? Oh, God, no. That was Rosie Ruiz.”
And off I went telling him how Rosie had died recently, and how sad her whole story was and how she really didn’t mean to cheat to win back in 1980, she just wanted to cheat for a decent time, but jumped in too soon and then wouldn’t admit it after they gave her the olive wreath and medal, you know, a screwup, like Mulvaney.“
Ramon consolidated more files and said, “I think I read something about that.”
“Which one?” I asked “Mulvaney or Rosie?”
Before he could answer I told him “you know the women’s world record in the marathon was just broken last weekend in Chicago by a Kenyan lady Brigid Kosgei.”
“She beat Usain Bolt’s time, right?”
“No, Bolt ran the 100 and 200 and besides women can’t run with the best men, testosterone and all that.”
Which brought up the subject of the recent IAAF ruling on testosterone levels for Caster Semenya and the other inter-sex women athletes. And you try to explain that phenomenon to a computer technician. Anyway, on it went, one thing touching upon another.
Ramon’s head was beginning to spin by this time like the internal mechanism of that USB drive he was all but finished installing.
Our two cats came over to check him out and musta thought he was a good human cause they sidled right up. Ramon said he had seven cats of his own. I guess they could tell.
Ramon fixed us up real good on the computer, reset some folders, cleaned up the home screen. He was the kind of guy that knew his trade very well even knew some snippets of running here and there, but just enough to be completely confused. Like me with computers.
And so it goes.
Bobbi’s statue in her studio
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